One of the things I love about the web is that things have such a long shelf life. A group of people will discover something and share it but a whole new set of people may not see it until much later. People can get the same peice of content sent to them at wildly different times depending on who they are connected to. I am still getting sent ‘viral’ films that I first saw or sent years ago but it works the other way around too. Shreds are a series of video mash-ups that have been on youtube since the beginning of the year and somehow I missed them when they got sent round back then. Basically they are re-edits of some musical greats like Eric Clapton and Santana playing live but with an overdubbing of amateur mistakes. Subtle and brilliantly done. The artists must be spitting blood….
Is an American photographer who has shot a series of really interesting new images - Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) etc.
He says “This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, I hope to raise some questions about the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.
Barbie dolls (2008)
Depicts 32,000 Barbies, equal to the number of elective breast augmentation surgeries performed monthly in the US in 2006.
The new Hovis TV ad is great. It’s exactly what a TV ad should be - big budget, well shot, great narrative, epic, emotion filled. The truth is that TV is still the dominant media consumed in people’s living rooms. I think it should act like a dominant media too. None of this product demo / slice of every day life bollocks. We can get that on Eastenders. If advertising agencies still insist on calling their ads ‘films’ and media agencies charge a small fortune for airing them, lets have big budget, cinematic productions for our sixty seconds of escapism. Digital content is still some way of having the same gravitas as a TV ad done well. This ad proves the point.
This is the cover from Kings of Leon’s new album ‘only by the night’. I love it and I am not sure why. There is a huge poster version by Shepherds Bush and every time I pass it on the bus I can’t take my eyes off of it. It’s really quite dark but just draws you in.
I am Djing a friends wedding next weekend and have been rifling through my record collection to work out some sort of set. It always dismays me that most people seem to think that wedding sets have to be full of with crap pop - Angels, You make me want to shout, Walking on sunshine, ABBA that sort of stuff. Even though you’ve got to try and cater for a huge age group, the tunes can still be great. I am going to start with loads of soul and disco classics then move through into a bit of crowd pleasing 80’s stuff like Young MC and De la Soul then finish with some old skool house. Here’s my top 20 wedding tunes list (in no particular order).
Stretch - why did you do it? (female vocal)
Lionel Ritchie - All night Long
Doobie brothers – Long train running
Gwen McCrae - All this love that i’m givin’
Earth, wind and fire – Lets groove
Jackie Wilson – Higher and higher
Grace Jones – Pull up to the bumper
Anita Ward – Ring my Bell
Stevie Wonder – Signed, sealed, delivered
Ray Munnings - Funky Nassau
Sister Sledge - Thinking of you
Chery Lynn - To be real
Chic - Good Times
Diana Ross - Upside down
Lipps Inc - Funkytown
De la Soul - Rollerskating Jam named Saturday
Young MC - Know How
FBI project - Back to my Roots
CC Peniston - Finally
Alison Limerick - Where love lives
Hilarious(ly) bad ska-beat Christian song. Worryingly catchy. Check out the guy on the orange guitar. I love that there are people in the world like this. All together now….
Amended for their local market. Nowadays, I imagine they just look the same as they do all around the world but with Polish text. I love these though. The first one is for ‘Gremlins’. How cool is that?!
